Schwarz
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As far as someone "appropriating" Mondrian, that is, I think, impossible.
And this impossibility is quite interesting. Mondrian, from around 1920 on,
is no longer an "author." Thus there is nothing to appropriate. He was
involved in a school called "the style," the object of which was, ideally at
least, to produce a totally anonymous art. He encouraged this, and became
upset when certain members of "de styl" deviated from his way of doing
things. There are, in fact, already a great many "Mondrians" painted by
others. Once, when given some advice in speeding up his extremely
painstaking methods, so he could be more productive, he answered: "I do not
need more paintings. I need to understand." I think Mondrian would be
extremely pleased that yet another artist would be interested in using his
approach. And, as a friend of Duchamp (there was mutual admiration here),
he would probably have understood her "need" to exactly duplicate one of his
paintings (if this in fact is what she has done). In any case, in my view,
Mondrian's work is undeconstructible, or, let us say, at least as
undeconstructable as that of Derrida.
correcting and adding to the record on : STEVEN PARRINO
Steve always had a neat studio. There was never a big storage closet full of older works. Although we were friends I never really caught him at work putting together those big scale piss elegant abstractions. I do know studio mates of his however who did spend time with him working who mentioned that he had a habit of either destroying, reusing (refucking-up) or painting over unsold pieces. Some of those canvas wads were old (often exceedingly successful ) stretcher pieces. Pieces in one show would be repainted, usually trending to black for the next show. I think he took a que and ran with it, as this is something (best friend and biker buddy) Olivier Mosset does too: repainting old pieces for new shows. This would suggest that there is precious little work(for someone with 37 solo shows) outside of the sold pieces. I'm hearing that Steve didn't keep much of a record of this process. That may make for something of a challenge in assembling his catalog raisonn'e. With any luck written and photographic gallery and museum records of works destroyed, transmuted and physically same (painted-repainted) paintings with different names, identities and meanings will form a convolutedly accurate history. I would hope that this important aspect is explored in Parrino's upcoming major survey show currently being planned by Geneva's Musee d'Art Moderne et Contemporain for October 2005.
note: Parrino's destruction of unsold paintings has a wholly different meaning from the destructive editing activities of precedential modernist's like de Kooning and Baldassari. This may have been fully obvious but is just dawning on me now, posthumously.
-Bill Schwarz
"Never really intended for construction, Living Pod was a humorous dig at the established way of doing things, suggesting that houses didn't have to be symmetrical, brick-built boxes. In its obvious debt to spacecraft aesthetics, it also seems to celebrate the possibilities of new technologies and new materials--an adaptable, functional, clip-together kind of future."
"Archaeologists uncover Mies van der Rohe villa
Archaeology is getting more modern—or rather, its uses are. The foundations of a villa built 1925-27 by the eminent Bauhaus architect, Mies van der Rohe, have been uncovered in the Polish town of Gubin. It was the first Modern building by the architect, commissioned by industrialist Ernst Wolf and destroyed in World War II. The excavation project was carried out by an international team of 12 students from the Technische Universität at Cottbus. The villa may now be partially rebuilt or used to inspire artistic interventions"